Teacher Strategies for Supporting Chinese Immigrant Students in Toronto Public Elementary Schools: Overcoming Challenges Caused by Cultural Transition, Parenting Styles and Personality.

With the increasing number of immigrant Chinese students studying in Toronto public schools, different kinds of challenges appear especially during the first school year. Those challenges prevent newcomer students from flourishing academically and socially. However, these students’ voices and difficulties have not been valued. This paper will specifically categorize the difficulties that newcomer Chinese students meet and points out the cultural, parental influence and personality factors contributing to these challenges. Most importantly, this study provides some coping strategies for classroom teachers to help newly arrived immigrant Chinese students to go through the first year of studying in Canadian public kindergarten and elementary schools. A qualitative study was conducted, including two semi-structured interviews of two teachers in Toronto public schools. The interviews reveal that Chinese parents tend to compare their child’s academic performance with peers and with the marks, their child earned in China. However, the two participants believed that culture was not a deciding factor causing challenges to newcomer Chinese students and lead to different academic and social behaviors in Toronto public kindergartens and elementary schools